Print technology and the discovery of the new world have often played a major role in the construction of our visions of modernity by means of a mass-produced imagery set in motion by the increased circulation of goods, people, and ideas across transcontinental routes. Such characterization of “modernity,” however, too quickly risks erasing the preexistent in ways that have become utterly familiar to the field of American studies: what is presented as new and innovative has a history extending already from the conceptualization of the American continent itself as the “discovery” of a “new world.”

Our scholarly project aims therefore at reflecting upon a set of interconnected questions about how an integral understanding of the non-neutral characterization of the digital can be carried out from a great diversity of perspectives that transcend American geographical, historical, linguistic, and cultural boundaries. To what extent are current digital theories developed in the US driven by a supposedly neutral attention to the medium? To what extent do the range of digital forms of expressions and the methodologies employed in their analysis happen to exceed the alleged paradigm of “media-specific” analysis? And how might the formal and technological approaches to digital poiesis be ideally situated within a history of artistic practices related to (North) American culture?

We invite submission of abstracts (500-word length max) by no later than February 20, 2014 http://www.iasaweb.org/news/20.html